Doomsday Ventio: Evolo Irritus
by panda-tiney
Summary: After Akane has a bad case of the flu an unidentified virus comes to Nermia and people start to drop like flies. The city is soon sealed off and everyone wonders of a cure. Follow Nermia's journey through what might result in the epidemic of the century.


"Yo." A grinning Ranma Saotome sauntered into the hall from his and his father's joint room swooning over the fist-bearing figure.  
  
"What Ranma?" She shot back, stealing a glance at him. She saw his stare glaring back for a fraction of a second and turned away. She stopped in the hall right above the stairs of her brightly sunlit house to maneuver her hands firmly into their war barren place upon her hips.  
  
"I gotta tell ya somethin' and before ya stop me I've just gotta." Ranma stood tall in front of her, practically swooping over. He checked the floor to make sure it was still there or some other interesting reason and looked back to Akane's stunned eyes.  
  
'Ranma is never this serious . . .something must be wrong. Unless . . .' Akane thought back to when Ranma had thought her dead and told her he loved her. Of course, that was probably in her mind for who knows what reason and a figment of her very wrong imagination. Ranma couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't love her and she knew that. That had happened more than a year ago but she still clung to the memory. She had never had that kind of dream before. She knew it could easily have been the state she was in but still, it felt too real to call fake. Like labeling it false was doing it some injustice. She shrugged off the feeling and looked back into his heart-felt eyes. She was being a dope and she knew it but it was a beautiful day to be a dope! "Go on," was all she could utter at the moment. The mood got tenser and tenser, her heart beat faster and faster and then he answered.  
  
"I-I-I'm . . . I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid of . . ." Ranma trailed off as the tension between them became unbearable.  
  
"Yes Ranma." She hopefully muttered never losing track of his wandering eye. She followed its path to the rug again.  
  
"I'm . . . well, I'm afraid of you're cooking. I think the water you boiled over this morning blew up the kitchen!" He winked and nudged his way past her at lightening speed running down the railing and never stopping to look back at her increasingly crimson face.  
  
"Ranma!" Akane Tendo screamed at the top of her lungs, lunging lightly from side to side down the wooden stairs of her house. She kept hopping as the anger boiled up inside her like the water this morning. It hadn't been her fault, she was watching it the whole time but the second she turned away it went crazy. She hopped down a few more stairs and then feeling the rug beneath her slowly disappear, the ground beneath her gradually flee, the world around her steadily dissipate into absolute oblivion, into nothing she grasped onto the stair railing and felt her conscious leisurely slip away.  
  
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Disclaimer: Rumiko Takahashi owns Ranma ½ including all the people she sells the rights to including Viz and Kitty.  
  
A/N: This is very loosely based on Connie Willis' book Doomsday Book. Thanks for reading!  
  
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And lest things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who are to come after us, I, seeing so many evils and the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One, being myself as if among the dead, I, waiting for death, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed. And, lest the writing should perish with the writer and the work fail with the laborer, I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun...  
  
- Brother John Clyn 1349  
  
- foreword, Connie Willis's Doomsday Book  
  
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Doomsday Ventio: Evolo Irritus  
  
By panda_tiney  
  
Prologue  
  
Ranma paced outside the small room carefully studying every movement he heard behind the closed door. He wanted to go in, to see her but he knew he couldn't. He sketched out the scene inside in his mind. Akane would be lying under a few blankets with a cold cloth on her forehead. Cheeks flustered, temperature up, heart beating slowly, pulse faint and all because of him. If he hadn't have been such a jerk she wouldn't have fainted and hit her head. He could still see the fall in his mind.  
  
Akane crumbling down the hard wooden stairs as he came into the front hall again to tease her. He couldn't hide his grief for that first instant was too sudden. He quickly took a hold of his emotions as best he could and ran over to her.  
  
Ranma stepped up to the door and raised his hand to knock lightly on it staring coldly at the porcelain duck with the name Akane in black across it hang gently swaying with the vibrations of his knock. The door swung open and Ranma felt himself pulled into the room by the gruff of his shirt. Nabiki pushed him towards the makeshift bed in the middle of the room. Every window was open and it chillingly looked as if it had come from Ranma's mind. He took a step forward and fell to his knees in front of Akane's sleeping form. She winced in pain and Ranma's hand went immediately to hers but it was just a nightmare. Nabiki stared silently.  
  
"She'll be fine Ranma, it's the flu, and it's nothing. Stop being such a baby! Jeez! You keep acting like this and people will start to think you have a thing for Akane." Nabiki said calmly as she sauntered over to her drink at the other side of the room.  
  
Ranma shot a scowl at Nabiki and went back to sitting and waiting for Akane to wake up. Nabiki persisted to rid his bad mood.  
  
"Hello? Mr. Negative? She's already gotten over the worst of it. She'll be fine and then before you know it you guys'll be fighting like normal!" Nabiki lay on her stomach on Akane's bed and ate a bag of something that smelt delicious to Ranma who hadn't eaten for a day and a half, ever since her fall.  
  
"Yeah, but it's my fault so why not just hang out here I've got nuthin' better t' do." Ranma said justifying his reason for attending as if by memory while peering at Nabiki to see if she had bought it. She wasn't even paying attention and had gone back to eating the tasty, bagged treat.  
  
They sat there for a while and observed, remaining for the moment she awoke both pretending they didn't give a damn. Ranma started to close his eyes and go over katas as the day went by while Nabiki killed time by doing homework throughout the night.  
  
After a few hours Ranma slipped out of the room and back to his lying down and staring up towards the ceiling. He could feel his eyelids heavily weighing down on him and his body slowly shutting down until he could no longer fight it and fell into a dreamless sleep. Well, almost dreamless.  
  
Ranma looked around the clear-cut forest he was in. There was stump upon stump of trees that had the width of his arms outstretched twice. They ere cut in all different shapes and sizes. He could see for miles and the only picture within span of him were the trees, what was left of them that is.  
  
He started to wander and weave his way through the stumps and caught himself between two very large trunks to climb over. He started up one but easily slid down the smooth wood wall. He placed his hand upon the wall of stumps and fell it some what wet. As if there were something else plastered on.  
  
"Hey Bud! Sorry but that's wet paint. I'd watch m'self if I was you. But I ain't and you ain't and you'll never be in time." A gruff voice came hollering from above him. Ranma turned his head to the side and then up to the top of the increasingly higher trunks. They were almost fifteen feet now. Fifteen feet of sheer, burnished, light brown wall.  
  
The man was on a rusty silver device that Ranma remembered seeing on TV. that window washers used. To call it silver was a compliment to the machine and an insult to the color. The paint had peeled off almost three quarters of it and the rust had formed over into a nice amber finish. The man was, if possible, more grotesque than the machine he was almost tipping off of. He had jean overalls and a gray t-shirt underneath. It looked as if some rust from the machine had transferred onto his clothing because all over the legs of his overalls was the almost familiar auburn color of the rust. It had a deep undertone of intense red that shone almost brilliantly. It seemed a shame to waste such a color on such a thing as rust.  
  
Ranma looked to the man's face which looked as worn as the machine and was quite wrinkly at that. He had gray-white hair and it stuck wildly out on each side of his black hat. At least Ranma thought that at some point the hat had been black, it looked almost gray with age now almost like the man. Ranma looked to his hands as they shakily swayed back and forth, paintbrush in each hand with the same motif as the rest of him. He looked strangely to the tip of the brush closest to him and saw a bright red plastered upon the wall as he watched. He didn't know why but it made his skin crawl and not just anything made Ranma Saotome's skin crawl!  
  
"Yep, ya can't kill this one fer her Bud! Too bad though . . ." the man trailed off and went back to brushing shaking his head sadly as he did. Finally Ranma had the idea to speak.  
  
"What?" He said dazzled by the red paint on his fingers. He turned back to the wall and it was covered in red. The two trunks were massively enlarging, almost twenty-two feet at that point and growing slowly but surely. He ran up and touched it. It was sparkling and had a glazed gleam of light flash by it ever so often giving it another layer of brilliance but something was wrong. It was completely dry.  
  
"Sorry Bud, but it's just too fast fer ya. Yep, just too fast. . ." Ranma heard the old man's creaky voice again and turned for an explanation. There was nothing where the man had been. No antique machine, vintage man or one single paintbrush. The wall was still red and growing. Ranma looked to the bottom as it grew and even the roots were red. He stepped back in confusion and then, out of nowhere, heard a scream. He recognized it almost immediately as Akane.  
  
He turned to see her crumpled on the ground and looking as white as a ghost. Ranma ran over to her almost tripping on the way there. He stopped where she lay and scooped her into his arms. He cradled her head in his shoulders as she lay still. He quickly brushed the few hairs that had blown into her eyes away and shook her gently, unknowingly, frightened of what this meant.  
  
They fluttered open instantly and she moaned trying to turn her head. She looked up to see his face and smiled. She felt her hand come up to the side of his frightened face and held it there, "Ranma," she whispered.  
  
He didn't know how to react, he sat comfortably and nodded slowly, "Yeah, I'm here." He stared at her and surveyed her limp body. Nothing looked broken but he could feel she was hurt, badly.  
  
"Get out while you can. I'm already lost, there's nothing here! You won't be able to save me, you can't kill without killing me. I'm too far Ranma . . .too far." Akane whispered through a raspy voice. She suddenly coughed and brought her hand from his face to her mouth. She smiled as it concluded and put her hand to his shoulder.  
  
"What Akane? What's wrong?" Ranma asked urgently. He grabbed her shoulders and found them standing; her with her hand still perched on his shoulder. She grinned tiredly and her hand fell slightly down to his chest.  
  
"You're too far." Akane smiled, "I'm too far." She said this with an expression like anything he said wouldn't make a difference, like it was already done. He looked to where her hand had been and noticed a steady streak of blood down to where her hand perked atop his thumping chest. He looked worriedly into her eyes as she continued to smile and stare back. A completely empty stare as if she was vacant, as if she had already left and she had left behind her garbage, her body. Everything else was gone though, swept away into another world.  
  
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A day later she woke suddenly and smiled thrusting out her arms to stretch her tense muscles. She felt so much better and by looking around her figured she had fainted and had been brought to her room. She coughed rasply and immediately Ranma and Nabiki's heads popped up above her staring down and blocking the light.  
  
"Hey, you're blocking the light!" Akane said exasperatedly. They both moved and Ranma left the room. Nabiki stayed behind and changed the cloth Akane now noticed atop her head. Akane sat up with little dizziness and smiled. Nabiki stared happily at her younger sister who yawned and fell back down gleefully, energetically, healthily. Staring out at the bright summer day through the open window.  
  
"Well, I guess the worst is over huh?" Nabiki laughed.  
  
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A/N: Well, that's the first chapter. Tell me what you think! I'm going to write the other chapters longer but this was just a prologue. Review or I might forget to write the next chapter! Next chapter hopefully up soon! 


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